As bad as they want to be (CREDIT: DreamWorks Animation/Universal Pictures)
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Awkwafina, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos, Zazie Beetz, Danielle Brooks, Natasha Lyonne, Maria Bakalova, Alex Borstein, Richard Ayoade, Lilly Singh
Director: Pierre Perifel
Running Time: 104 Minutes
Rating: PG for Gravity-Defying Cartoon Action
Release Date: August 1, 2025 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Following their release from prison, the anthropomorphic professional criminal crew known straightforwardly as “The Bad Guys” – Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Mr. Tarantula (Awkwafina), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), and Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos) – is trying to break good. But that’s not so easy with their notorious resumes holding them back. Plus, there are certain factions who would rather they stay in the heist game, particularly a group of lady criminals who frame them, kidnap them, and force them into their plan to commandeer a space station to steal all of the world’s gold. Through it all, they try to convince the skeptical chief of police (Alex Borstein) that she can trust them, even though they keep forgetting that she’s been promoted to commissioner. At least they have an ally in the form of Governor Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz), who’s tried to help them on the inside while doing her best to keep her own sketchy past a secret.
What Made an Impression?: Laughing the Story Along: The plot of The Bad Guys 2 revolves around a device called “MacGuffinite,” which made me and a few other adults in the screening chuckle. If you’re a cinephile, you probably already know that a MacGuffin (also spelled “McGuffin”) is a device that drives the action of a story forward, without being what the story is really about. I doubt that the youngsters that this movie is primarily targeted towards will get the reference, but it’s a nice touch nonetheless. Vibrant Colors & Familiar Voices: Weirdly enough, I haven’t seen the first Bad Guys movie, nor have I read the graphic novels they’re based on, nor do I have any kiddos in my life to pester me about their love for them. So while I’m not bringing much emotional investment to this theatrical experience, I can still appreciate the zippy painterly animation (and its occasional hallucinatory switches into other styles) and also enjoy playing a round of, “Hey, Who’s That Actor’s Voice I’m Pretty Sure I Recognize?” Completing the Assignment: Ultimately, The Bad Guys 2 held my attention and provided some mildly diverting attention for an hour and a half. And I wasn’t asking for anything more than that! Maybe you’ll vibe with this one a little more than I did, whether or not you’re a kid, and whether or not you have kids. But we can go ahead and file this review of mine under “Not a Rave, But Can’t Complain.”
The Bad Guys 2 is Recommended If You Like: Heists for Beginners
Starring: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Liza Koshy, Cody Rhodes, Eddie Yu
Director: Akiva Schaffer
Running Time: 85 Minutes
Rating: PG-13 for Cartoonish Violence and Pixelated Nudity
Release Date: August 1, 2025 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Carrying on the inimitable legacy of his late father, Lieutenant Detective Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) is the pride of Los Angeles’ Police Squad division. But he and his partner Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser) – son of Frank Sr.’s old boss – find themselves a bit stymied by their latest case. Or pair of cases, really. Which are really the same case. First there’s a bank robbery in which none of the culprits actually take any money. Then there’s a dead man in an electric car in a ditch in an apparent suicide. But the deceased’s sister (Pamela Anderson) suspects some foul play. And it all leads back to tech mogul Richard Cane (Danny Huston), who’s seeking to electrically revolutionize the world in his image.
What Made an Impression?: Legacy vs. Independence: In one of the first scenes of this rebooted version of The Naked Gun, Drebin Jr. looks at a portrait of his dad and asks him if he can be both exactly the same as him and also completely his own man. That’s basically the core challenge of any legacy sequel, but it’s especially acute when following in the footsteps of one of the most beloved spoof series of all time. Successful comedy thrives on surprise, but you risk alienation if you stray too far from the established formula. Well, I’m here to happily report that Drebin and Company have achieved their goal. This Naked Gun indeed honors the profoundly silly legacy of its predecessors while also working in a sufficiently altered milieu and blazing its own path. All the Funny: It certainly helps when the crew behind the scenes has a knack for crafting funny business. Akiva Schafer is the key creative voice here, serving as a director and one of three credited screenwriters (along with Dan Gregor and Doug Mand). Schaffer is best known as one-third of The Lonely Island, the crew responsible for Saturday Night Live‘s Digital Shorts era. Unsurprisingly, he brings an omnivorous and shameless approach to the cavalcade of joke-a-minute gags of display. Vocal puns, text puns, visual puns, background gags, running gags, misdirects, hallucinatory diversions, bizarre character beats: if you hate one joke, don’t worry, because the forecast is like mountainous weather. Which is to say, a new joke is coming in just a minute. A New Drebin for a New Era: The original Naked Gun movies and the Police Squad! TV show were released in a time when fictional police officials were widely accepted as trustworthy authority figures. But the cultural temperature is a little different in 2025. This Naked Gun is hardly a merciless takedown of copaganda, but it does take some genuinely hard shots at Drebin Jr’s extra-legal behavior. Neeson is just as occasionally oblivious and literal-minded as Leslie Nielsen was before him, but he’s also more feral and clearly deserving of being knocked down a few pegs. L.A. is Full of Characters: Thus far, I’ve mainly talked about the director and the No. 1 Guy on the Call Sheet, without really spotlighting the supporting cast. So let me say: they’re all great! Pamela Anderson is a natural as the femme fatale, and Hauser is always reliable, while Huston and CCH Pounder also clearly understand the assignment of: “play it straight, and the laughs will follow.” Comedy is alive and naked, baby!
The Naked Gun (2025) is Recommended If You Like: To Laugh, and Laugh Again, and then Laugh Some More
Pete Davidson is home, sweet home (CREDIT: Roadside Attractions)
Starring: Pete Davidson, John Glover, Bruce Altman
Director: James DeMonaco
Running Time: 95 Minutes
Rating: R
Release Date: July 25, 2025 (Theaters)
Sometimes new movies get an ostensibly wide theatrical release from a major distributor, but they still somehow completely slip through the cracks. They get hardly any promotional push, and then they disappear from multiplexes after just a week and end up shunted to on-demand streaming soon thereafter. Most of these movies aren’t secret masterpieces or anything like that, but a lot of them are at least kind of interesting.
One such flick is The Home, co-written and directed by James DeMonaco and starring Pete Davidson as a super at a retirement community. You might think that Davidson would have enough star power and Purge franchise creator DeMonaco would have enough horror cachet to get this a more premium treatment. But no such dice.
Anyway, this review is mainly a PSA to get the word out to audiences who might still be possibly ever so slightly interested. Maybe The Home is already completely out of theaters by the time you’re reading this. (In which case, keep an eye out for it in your living room.) Or maybe there’s a showtime at the picture house in 15 minutes. (In which case: go, go, go!)
But will you actually enjoy any of it? To be clear, I’m certainly not raving. The twist, while interesting, is kind of predictable, and the script could have benefitted from at least one more revision. But it’s just unique enough for me to be satisfied that The Home is right at home in my viewing diary.
Still Happy After All These Years (CREDIT: Netflix)
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
Movies
–Happy Gilmore 2 (July 25 on Netflix)
–The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Theaters)
–Folktales (Theaters)
–The Home (Theaters) – Horror movie starring Pete Davidson directed by the guy who directed some of the Purge flicks.
–Oh, Hi! (Theaters) – Oh hi, Oh, Hi!
Music
-Alice Cooper, The Revenge of Alice Cooper
-Michael Clifford, Sidequest – 5 Seconds of Summer guitarist’s solo debut.
-Fitz and the Tantrums, Man on the Moon
-Madonna, Veronica Electronica
-Post Animal, IRON – I just heard of this band, and they sound like they might be worth checking out.
-Tyler, the Creator, DON’T TAP THE GLASS
Sports
-The Women’s Open (July 31-August 3 on USA and NBC)
But not sorry to you, Mr. Kitty (CREDIT: Mia Cioffi Henry/Sundance Institute/A24)
Starring: Eva Victor, Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, Louis Cancelmi, Kelly McCormack, John Caroll Lynch, E.R. Fightmaster
Director: Eva Victor
Running Time: 104 Minutes
Rating: R
Release Date: June 27, 2025 (Theaters)
First things first: did watching the 2025 movie Sorry, Baby make me want to go right home and say “Sorry, baby*” to someone myself? (*-Whether “baby” refers to an actual baby or a significant other or even a pet.) Not really, but it did kind of remind me of the importance of remorse when necessary. Anyway, as for the actual meat of the movie, it’s about a woman named Agnes (Eva Victor) dealing with the fallout of being sexually assaulted by her grad school thesis adviser. But it’s also just about her relationships with the people at this point in her life, particularly her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie). My favorite part was when she was reporting for jury duty and she was struggling to tell one of the attorneys that she’d been the victim of a crime without fully saying it out loud.
Bow wow wow, yippee yo, yippee yay (CREDIT: Tori Edvin Eliassen/Magnolia Pictures)
Starring: The Students and Teachers of Pasvik Folk High School, Plus a Bunch of Sled Dogs
Directors: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Running Time: 106 Minutes
Rating: Unrated (But PG-Level)
Release Date: July 25, 2025 (IFC Center in New York City)/August 1, 2025 (Los Angeles and Other Cities)
What’s It About?: In the most unforgiving stretches of northern Norway there lies a learning institution known as Pasvik Folk High School. Some hardy teenagers choose to attend there for a year to get away from the routine of the modern world and learn how to survive in the wilderness, while also corralling some adorable sled dogs. Folktales tracks the journey of one class from their arrival through months of utter darkness all the way to the tearful goodbyes and reintegration back home, having changed. Through it all, their story is explicitly connected to the Norns, the goddesses of Norse mythology responsible for weaving the strings of human destiny.
What Made an Impression?: A Star is Born:Folktales focuses on three students in particular: the socially awkward Bjørn Tore; the Dutch Romain, who finds himself anxious and adrift; and Hege, who’s struggling after the recent untimely murder of her father. Their arcs are all pretty predictable – they’re just teenagers going through teenager stuff, even if they are in the wilderness! But Hege’s story is a little meatier than the others, as she takes to the school like a dog in the mush. I think the marketers recognized this as well. That is her on the poster after all, bonding with a howling husky. A-Roooooooooo: Perhaps the most compelling scene in Folktales (or at least the most compelling to me as a canine connoisseur) is when the students meet the school dogs. Some of them are immediately friendly, others are a little more shy, but all of them are eager to please and run through the snow. I’m a little too old for high school now, but if I were still a teenager, these pups would be the way to convince me to spend months at the tip of Scandinavia. Connecting to Infinity: After a quick opening segment introducing the Norns, directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady mostly settle into a fly-on-the-wall realism approach. But a few visual motifs hang around to maintain the Norse connection, particularly red strings crawling up trees and seemingly stretching everywhere and every when. It underscores the vibe that we’re all connected back to countless generations, a feeling that I’m sure is only amplified at Pasvik Folk.
Folktales is Recommended If You Like: Aurora Borealis, Bildungsromans, A Vicarious Braving of the Elements
What would you do, if this Eddington-ed to you? (CREDIT: A24)
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Michael Ward, Amélie Hoeferle, Clifton Collins Jr., William Belleau, Matt Gomez Hidaka, Cameron Mann
Director: Ari Aster
Running Time: 149 Minutes
Rating: R
Release Date: July 18, 2025 (Theaters)
My cycle of reaction to Eddington was pretty similar to my response to Don’t Look Up (2021). With the latter, I found myself going, “Yes, I know climate change is a looming disaster,” but then by the end, it got a little loopier, and I was like, “Oh, what’s this now?” As for Ari Aster’s latest, it pummeled me into an internal monologue of “Yes, I remember that 2020 was a volatile time, and yes, I know that young people fighting against injustice can be insufferable.” But then it takes a turn about halfway through, and I was like, “Oh, this is what you were building up to?” And then when it zooms into its unpredictable conclusion, I was like, “Okay, when did we get off this exit?” Maybe it could have sped up to driving off that cliff a little sooner, although perhaps Aster also wanted us to feel that like that frog in the boiling water first for a little bit.
TV
–Digman! Season 2 Premiere (July 23 on Comedy Central) – Delayed from June 9.
–Match Game Season Premiere (July 23 on ABC) – Martin Short debuts as host!
–South Park Season 27 Premiere (July 23 on Comedy Central)
–Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Season Premiere (July 23 on ABC) – Joel McHale and Jim Rash are among the celeb guests this season.
Music
-Bush, I Beat Loneliness
-Zac Farro, Operator
-Laura Jane Grace, Adventure Club
-Styx, Circling from Above
We Smurfed What You Smurfed Last Smurf (CREDIT: Paramount Animation; Brook Rushton/Columbia Pictures)
Smurfs
Starring: Rihanna, James Corden, John Goodman, Nick Offerman, JP Karliak, Dan Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Jimmy Kimmel, Octavia Spencer, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Winter, Maya Erskine, Kurt Russell, Xolo Maridueña, Hugo Miller, Chris Miller, Billie Lourd, Marshmello, Spencer X, Chrisy Prynoski
Director: Chris Miller
Running Time: 92 Minutes
Rating: PG for Smurf Action and Some Rude Smurfin’
Release Date: July 18, 2025 (Theaters)
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Starring: Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Billy Campbell, Gabriette Bechtel
Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Running Time: 111 Minutes
Rating: R for Twisting, Poking, and Hanging, Plus a Few Seductions and a Couple of Joints
Release Date: July 18, 2025 (Theaters)
A couple of decades-old franchises are getting revived at the multiplex this weekend. That sentence could apply to just about any weekend from the past 25 years or so. But in case you’re reading this review from the future (or the past), the weekend I’m specifically referring to right now is the one that begins on July 18, 2025. And the movies I’m talking about are Smurfs (no “the”) and the same-titled lega-sequel I Know What You Did Last Summer. Is there any way both of these movies could possibly appeal to the same person?! Let’s use myself as a test case.
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